Conference Interpreter, who teaches interpreting and is a PhD student in interpreting studies. I write about interpreting, Translation and Interpreting Studies, and the things I teach to my interpreting students. If you want to read more about me you can find it here: http://interpreter.blogs.se/2010/12/07/about-me-10132490/. Welcome to my world of the spoken word, many books, and... total chaos.

I have colleagues who have night mares about looking for the booth, running around in maze-like corridors without ever finding your way to the booth. I cannot remember night mares like that. On the other hand I remember real life situations when I was completely stressed out sitting on a bus, in a taxi, on a train that does not simply arrive on time. So much for stress around the job, but what about stress on task.

I think the worst stress situations for me in the interpreting event is when you sit in the same room as you clients and you realize that they for one reason or another do not believe what you say. And you have to take back your clients trust.

So much for my personal reflections. Interpreters and stress was the topic of the second Interpreting Journal Club #IntJC. You can read the chat here . I have been meaning to write up my impressions and what I've learned from the second Tweetchat for quite a while now but time flies as usual. Maria Cristina de la Vega wrote a very nice report here. My participation record of #IntJC has not been splendid. I was particularily annoyed to miss out on the one about ethical issues. I will try to write up blog posts on the different issues dealt with based on my own experience and the protocols from the chats.

People's general perception of interpreting is also that this must be very stressful, people hear you are an interpreter, and often respond Â– Â“but it must be very stressfulÂ”. So what did the interpreters present at the discussion think about it.

First of all, to a certain extent stress is positive, but the interpreter easily crosses the line to negative stress. Stress Â– or maybe excitement Â– is positive if you can cope with it. It keeps you on your toes and several participants felt that it helps you deal with the situation at hand, but when stress takes over it makes you Â“freezeÂ”. @DosParules defined positive stress as the fuel that makes your engine react and negative stress as the one with you cannot cope and makes you freeze. @avic1 beautifully said when excitement turns into anxiety thatÂ’s when the stress gets negative. Stress also affects your performance. If youÂ’re stressed your performance decline, you have to cope and stay serene.
It turned out though that these interpreters stress less about the actual interpreting and more about the stress around work, technology, working conditions, documentation, location of the meeting and so forth. Stress also comes from many things that are not necessarily work related (personal situation, environmental factors etc). Interestingly enough, stress form speakers and colleagues can be contagious. @MariaCdelaVega2 rightly pointed out that you should not waste your time on the imponderables. So true, but so difficult not to, if you ask me.

Different ways to deal with the stress in the situation were voiced, those were breathing, sticking to the topic, imposing a calm attitude, stay neutral. Different participants also had different ways of how they behaved under stress, it could be cognitive, subjective or behavioural, i.e. peopleÂ’s performance goes down, they get moody and they start to move around.

It can be very stressful to see that you are not understood, or to not understand what you have to interpret. In some situations the interpreter can be used as scape goat, a situation which is stressful for the interpreter. Another issue is clientsÂ’ unrealistic demands, since youÂ’re the interpreter of X-language you can probably interpret Y-language too. When you are not in the booth, but next to your client, your clients perceive your stress and that becomes stressful too. Only @lioneltokyo had the experience of working in a crisis/conflict situation, but all interpreters agreed that those situations are likely to be extremely stressful but in another way than the Â“usualÂ” work stress.

Preparation can be stressful too, for instance when you have difficulties preparing yourself or when you are not enough prepared. Preparation is more stressful for beginners than for experienced interpreters. Jobs that come up last minute are very stressful and some even say no to them because of stress.
Is interpreting more stressful than other jobs? The participants said that it is more stressful than many jobs, but it does not deal with life and death or other extreme jobs.

On the issue of how interpreters deal with stress on a more general level, we all agreed that having a life outside interpreting was important. Participants also stressed an active life, running yoga and so forth.

I always refer to a zillion volts storming through my head when I'm doing my thing; in that sense, due to the extreme concentration necessary, it is stressful. Just for clarification: I am speaking here from my experience as a court interpreter, i.e. I am not a conference interpreter.

You rightfully point out that it does not involve life and death type stress. In fact, I would offer the suggestion to work on ensuring that you're not touched by what you do, lest you complicate your job immensely. However, let's not overlook the cases of our peers who work in emergency rooms, or (typically as volunteers) for the Red Cross, or other such jobs in direct contact with "real life" out there.

I am told by colleagues working in health care settings that distancing oneself from the "subjects" of our job is just as much key to performing optimally, from a purely technical interpreting point of view. Even so, they remind me that - just as "good" doctors with bedside manners - there is a difference between not letting the stress get to you (a good thing) and blocking out the human factor (decidedly a bad thing).

So, while stress can be a helpful tool to focus mental energy (e.g. my "electrical storm") the key is to manage one's own stress levels, regardless of the surrounding stress. It's tricky business.

Thank you for you're long and initiated comment. You should join us at #IntJC, next time is Saturday the 17th 10 p.m. Tokyo time and 2 p.m. Central European, I don't know what that corresponds to in Reno, but I would guess early morning. We will probably discuss how to deal with different speakers.

I like the distancing-strategy in order to not loose professionalism, I have experienced that in court too. And you're right, stress is a tricky business.

This is a very interesting topic to point out because nobody cares how interpreters feel and if they are under stress or not. I am a public service interpreter based in London and I do think this is a very important phenomena to be drawn into attention of people who think interpreters are just machines transalting/interpreting in between 2 languages.

To certain point "stress" is a good factor in interpreting, but only the possitive stress, also called Eustress.

I would like to stay in touch with you because I am doing a PhD from this topic and if you are interested I wish you were one of the interpreters who participaded in my PhD project. Hope you can see my details I enclose ( not visible to the public though).